It is important for a silver halide color photographic material to ensure excellent qualities in the color images after photographic processing.
In general, a silver halide color photographic material has on a support at least one silver halide emulsion layer, and usually has on said emulsion layer a surface layer (protective layer) containing as a binder a hydrophilic colloidal substance represented by gelatin. In viewing images produced in the photographic material of the above-described type through a photographic processing, it frequently occurs that it is difficult for viewers to get a good look at the images because they are dazzled by the light reflected on the surface of the photographic material.
In order to reduce the reflection of light as described above, there has been adopted a method of securing the matting effect by incorporating fine particles of an inorganic material, such as silica, titania, magnesia, etc., or an organic material, such as polymethylmethacrylate, cellulose acetate, cellulose propionate, etc., in the surface or interior part of a photosensitive material. For instance, JP-A-61-147248 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") discloses the art of making an improvement in surface gloss by incorporating colloidal silica having an average particle size of no greater than 100 .mu.m in the surface layer of a photosensitive material.
On the other hand, JP-A-01-142630 discloses the color print material in which a support whose surface has specular reflectivity or secondary diffuse reflectance is used and the surface gloss of the topmost layer arranged on the side where the light-sensitive layers are coated is controlled to 70-5%, thereby succeeding in reducing the feelings of glare and roughness on the surface.
With respect to further arts of using fine particles as cited above in a photosensitive material, there have been proposed some methods for the purpose of making an improvement in the surface adhesiveness of a photosensitive material in addition to the viewpoint of reducing the reflection of light on the surface, wherein fine particles as cited above are incorporated in the topmost layer or the backing layer of the photosensitive material to increase the surface roughness of the photosensitive material, that is, to render the surface matte, thereby reducing the adhesiveness. Those methods are disclosed, e.g., in JP-A-61-48851, JP-A-61-48853, JP-A-61-77044 and so on.
However, the above-cited methods are still unsatisfactory although they positively bring about an improvement in surface gloss, because the light reflected on the photosensitive material of the above-described kind changes its intensity depending on the positions of viewing light sources to make the viewing in some direction difficult after all. In portraits and the like which require of the images to have the power of delicate expression, it becomes an important problem that the reflection phenomenon of the above-described type causes a subtle change of the tone reproduction in the images and further makes the images lose a feeling of massiveness. Thus, it has been desired to develop the arts of settling these issues.